Today, Kyoto again, Nanzen-ji.

     Sakura blossoms in Kyoto rain
     I think of my grandfather

(maybe I'll try to make that into a proper Nihongo haiku...someday)

Nanzen-ji, big Zen temple complex. Great big old central temple, a painting of a dragon on the ceiling - you can only see it from outside. Apparently there's some thing about sticking your hands through the bars and clapping to make an echo. I follow along. (I bought a poster of the dragon painting.) Lovely lovely gardens, a great painting of Bodhidharma on one wall in the abbot's quarters. Had real o-cha in their tea room looking out at a waterfall and garden, very nice.

But then. Go up the hill behind. First a small old Buddhist temple, Saisho-in; not so much a touristy place as an active, day-to-day, actively used community temple - the kind I love to find. As I stand there for a moment of meditation, a woman parks her car just outside the grounds, walks up quickly, bows to the shrine, and hurries back out. Just stopped by to say "Hi" or "Thanks", I guess.

A beautiful small cemetery behind it, stand and watch the rain fall, see an offering of sake left on a grave, think the young man in the inner city pouring out a 40 for a fallen homie, consider that the Buddha was a prohibitionist, contemplate the adaptability of the dharma.

Umbrellas.

I don't have a good history with them. They tend to be ripped away by the wind, or left behind, within a few days of my purchasing one. So I usually go with a hat to keep my head dry, and a reasonably rain-repellent jacket.

But, I don't live in a mass-transit culture; when it's raining, I just don't spend much time outdoors.

Here, when it rains, umbrellas come out. Everyone has one. There are boxes or stands for wet umbrellas outside every shop.

Tramping around in the rain, getting damp, surrounded by umbrellas, getting weird looks for being an idiot who's gtting rained on, I gave in an bought one at a convenience store in Shinsaibashi. We'll see how long it lasts.

Earlier today, went to the Dali exhibit with Liz and company. Quite crowded; everyone very quiet, moving in orderly queues.

On sacrificing one's liver for culture:

So part of the thing is trying to get out and talk to people. But where do you go to meet new people in a strange town?

Bars, of course.

Which means a fair bit of drinking.

The results have been interesting, though...

How is it that I have reckoned myself a poet all these years, and yet
not read this?

For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire
and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it,
and only the same divinity transmuted and at two or three
removes, when we know least about it.

...

Too feeble fall the impressions of nature
on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill.
Every man should be so much an artist that he could
report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in
our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient
force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach
the quick and compel the reproduction of themselves in
speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are
in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and
handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole
scale of experience, and is representative of man, in
virtue of being the largest power to receive and to
impart.

...

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument
that makes a poem,--a thought so passionate and
alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal
it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature
with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal
in the order of time, but in the order of genesis
the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new
thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he
will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be
the richer in his fortune. For the experience of each
new age requires a new confession, and the world seems
always waiting for its poet. I remember when I was
young how much I was moved one morning by tidings that
genius had appeared in a youth who sat near me at
table. He had left his work and gone rambling none
knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, but
could not tell whether that which was in him was
therein told; he could tell nothing but that all was
changed,--man, beast, heaven, earth and sea. How gladly
we listened! how credulous! Society seemed to be
compromised. We sat in the aurora of a sunrise which
was to put out all the stars. Boston seemed to be at
twice the distance it had the night before, or was
much farther than that. Rome,--what was Rome? Plutarch
and Shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer no
more should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry
has been written this very day, under this very roof,
by your side.

This occurred to me as I was walking back to the subway Tuesday night. I
have been catching up on my Transcendentalists, Emerson and Whitman, while
I'm here.

----------

look out nihon
i am feeling american
i have been reading whitman

i will take the love of your women
yes, and that of your men too
i will take it not as theft but as tribute
it is freely given. i cannot refuse it

i am feeling american, more american than in a long while
reconnected as i read whitman
exuberant
beware japan
i will take the steps two at a time in your train stations
i will but gesture in your taverns, and glasses will shatter